Road traffic is prevented from crossing a rail road by a barrier or gate arm. The gate arm is lowered from a raised to a substantially horizontal position to present a physical barrier.
On occasions gate-arms are damaged when vehicles collide with them. This causes damage to the gate arm and its pivot mechanism. To alleviate this problem so-called gate savers are available. These allow the gate arm to pivot in a horizontal plane. In order to restore the gate arm to its original position it is known to provide hydraulic pistons or compression springs. The arrangements are complicated, only permit a small range of movement and may be subject to failure as it will be appreciated that gate-arms are located in the open and thus exposed to the effects of the weather.
In addition some prior art arrangements require the spring to be unloaded to allow re-positioning of the gate arm after impact. It will be recognized that such unloading is an additional step that can require additional resources to accomplish. In remote areas, it can take some time for these resources to arrive to conduct these resetting operations. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a gate arm saver that presents a less complicated, more cost effective, broader range of motion solution that automatically resets itself after an impact.
The invention provides such a gate arm saver. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.